PBEM huge problem.

[Night]

My freind and I tried to play a PBEM game, but after i sent him the first turn file, he get's this error message:

ERROR!: Unreadable File - No Network

any ideas?

[Night]

OK now he tried hosting and sending, when I get the file and download it to my PBEM file, it doesn't show up in the PBEM load list in-game, and the file itself in the PBEM folder say's PBEM.sav.txt and comes up in notepad with all crazy characters and letters etc. I don't see what we are doing wrong, atleast on my end I'm 95% sure i'm doing everything right, If not then it is overly complicated and not explained because I have followed directions exactly... I'm very very disapointed that SC has little support for Cable users trying to play an IP game, and even more upset that a simple PBEM game goes haywire. If I can't play with my friends without them comming to my house, then I don't know why I have this game.

[Hubert Cater]

As posted in the SC Discussion Forums I would suggest taking a look at the 'TCPIP Quick How To Guide' found in your SC installation directory as it should answer and provide workarounds for most TCP/IP issues.

As for your posts above I am honestly having a hard time following them, sounds like you are trying to play PBEM and TCP/IP at the same time so it is a little confusing.

Just off the bat here, if you start a new PBEM game once the player has started the game and finishes their turn, they should receive a message that the saved turn file has been deposited in their PBEM directory. Once your opponent has sent you the file, you will have to place it in your PBEM directory and then launch SC selecting the LOAD SAVED PBEM option from the MAIN MENU screen. The game will only load files with the extension .sav and not .sav.txt. The .txt may have been added from opening and saving in your text editor or could have been added by your email program. This or other forms of file corruption/stripping has been known to happen from Hotmail or Yahoo users and the common workaround there was to zip the files before transmission followed by unzipping them after you receive them and placing them in the PBEM directory. If this is done there really should be no reason a PBEM game will not work. If you can confirm these steps that would be great and after that we can look at what else might be wrong if it still does not work.

This should help for PBEM but for TCP/IP you will have to be a little more specific as to the steps you followed and what each player sees on screen (i.e. host IP address listing etc) in order for me to verify what is or what is not happening in your particular case.

I would also suggest trying either a PBEM or TCP/IP game with someone who is known to have successfully done so in the past as this might help narrow it down for you as opposed to you both trying it out if neither of you have done so before. Avoid the blind leading the blind sort of thing

Anyways, let me know if any of this helps.

Hubert